


Bleak Immortality

by Cats_Dont_Float



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Death, Depression, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 13:17:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20967197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cats_Dont_Float/pseuds/Cats_Dont_Float
Summary: Immortality seemed like the ultimate prize at the end of the game. But when those who never reached god tier reach the end of their lives, those left behind struggle to do with spending the rest of eternity without those they love.





	Bleak Immortality

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of this is like... super vague?? It was a sort of attempt at voicing the confusion and emptiness of Dave in this fic, but I think it might just make it hard to understand, so I thought I'd just say that before you start reading. So just trust me, it gets better and more understandable further in.

When he was a kid, Dave thought he knew what loneliness was. Days spent cowering in his bedroom, trying to convince himself he wasn't scared of his Bro, and that his Bro loved him, were enough to teach Dave exactly what it felt like to be all alone in the world. But now he knows that he was wrong, all of those years. Because loneliness is even worse when you've experienced what its like to love and be loved, only for them to then be gone.

For the first few months, Dave can almost pretend that everything's fine. When he looks around, there's still things all over to the house that belong to him, to Karkat, left there and not touched since he went. Dave knows he should move them, should clean the house out so he can try and move on, and his friends have been trying to get him to do just that, but he's not ready yet. Not ready to let go of what him and Karkat used to have.  
Most of Karkat's stuff is still upstairs in what used to be their shared bedroom: clothes still hanging in the wardrobe, a pair of his old shoes tucked under the bed and a woolly hat, with holes cut in it for his horns, draped over a hook on the back door. Dave knows the exact placement of every Karkat related item in the house, so he can avoid looking at them when it hurts too much, and he goes in the bedroom as little as possible. He's been sleeping on the couch entirely since the third month without Karkat.  
He stops inviting his friends over after four months or so, and he barely ever goes out to see them anymore. Their looks are too full of sympathy, and pity. And there's absolutely nothing that could make him want to face Kanaya, not yet. He'll go see her when it doesn't hurt so bad but... she's the one person he wants to see least right about now.

By the time he reaches eight months alone, the gaping hole in his life left by Karkat's absence is getting bigger everyday. Like a black hole in space, it's dragging everything into it, until his life seems to get emptier everyday. Some days, he barely even gets up, just lays on the sofa all day and stares blankly at the walls or ceiling, and sometimes getting a few hours here and there of restless sleep. When he does manage to drag himself off of the sofa, its only to force himself to eat, or to shower for the first time in a week. He's glad he's not speaking to any of the others right now, because if Rose could see him like this, well... he doesn't actually want to think about what she'd say.

One year without Karkat crashes down onto him like someone's dropped a huge, heavy bag of bricks from a height straight onto his shoulders. He sleeps straight through the anniversary of it (probably the most sleep he's gotten in that year) and then spends the next three days sobbing continuously into a pillow and failing to suppress the memories of his relationship with Karkat that he's been trying not to think about for so long. The house is so quiet, has been for the last year, and he hates it. The memory of Karkat's loud voice echoes through the empty rooms on days when Dave's feeling particularly bad, and he finds himself desperate to have Karkat hold him again and just tell him that everything's going to be okay. But he knows it won't be. Because how can everything be okay when he doesn't have Karkat by his side anymore?

Karkat was the first person he ever loved. When they met on the meteor they'd hated each other at first, until Dave saw through Karkat's loudness and anger to see the softness underneath, and Karkat became the only person to get to know how Dave really felt inside. They spent the last year or so of the journey on the meteor dating in secret, and pretending that the game had ended and that they were safe and could just mess around and not care about the future. They were just stupid teenagers in love, and it was the best thing Dave had ever experienced. When he closes his eyes, he can still remember the feeling of Karkat curled up against his chest, purring softly and running his hands through Dave's hair. And sometimes, when he's laying on the sofa in the dead of night, he thinks he feels the weight of Karkat sprawled across him, or the familiar warmth of his grey skin pressed up against his side. He always cries when he opens his eyes and remembers everything.

Rose finally takes matters in to her own hands a few days after the year anniversary. Dave's stood in the kitchen by the window, a mug of coffee (long gone cold) clutched in his hands, staring blankly into the garden and remembering how Karkat liked to feed the birds, when he hears someone literally kick the door down. Instantly there's a sword in his hand (he's picked back up the habit of having one constantly in his syalladex since being alone), but he drops it with a sigh when Rose steps into the dim house.  
Before he can say anything to her, she's got him pulled into a tight hug. And suddenly he's not even angry at her for breaking in, and he starts to sob uncontrollably onto her shoulder.  
"I don't wanna be alone anymore, Rose," he chokes out, clutching tightly at the orange material of her god tier pyjamas, her shoulder dampening under his cheek.  
"I know," she murmurs softly, tightening her arms even more around him, and leaning in even closer. For a few minutes all there is is the sound of Dave crying and Rose murmuring soft things to him in an attempt to somehow make the pain go away. It doesn't work, it never will, but for a second he does feel just slightly less alone.  
"How do I... How.... How do I do this forever?" He sobs after over five minutes have passed and he's still crying onto her shoulder.  
"I don't know," she says quietly, "And I don't know how long its going to take, but things will get better. Maybe not completely better, but a little at least." And Rose is always right, he tells himself, so he tries to take comfort in that fact. But he can't, because over her shoulder he's just spotted one of Karkat's sweaters draped across the back of a chair.  
Eyes pressed tightly closed, he sobs onto her shoulder for what feels like hours (he doesn't even want to think about checking his internal clock to see how long it's actually been), until she manages to draw him off of her shoulder with promises that she'll make him some food and she's not going to leave until he gets some proper sleep. And though he doesn't feel like eating or sleeping, he lets her care for him, and does fall asleep a few hours later on the sofa, with his head in her lap as she smooths his hair down gently under her fingers.

After that he tries, he really does, to go out and see the others, but only once he gets Rose to get them all to promise not to mention Karkat. So he goes over to John's house and the two play video games together like nothing's wrong, and when he visits Roxy and Calliope he lets them cut his hair and paint his nails (black and red; he chooses not to think about the colours too much). Going over to see Jade is one of the best choices he makes. The two work together, mostly in silence, in her garden for hours, pulling up weeds, harvesting fruit and vegetables, and planting new seeds, and afterwards she makes dinner for him with her home-grown plants. She doesn't mention Karkat once, luckily, just tentatively asks Dave how he's doing, and tells him that he's always welcome to stay at her house if he needs to get away from his for a while. He crashes on her sofa that night, and when he leaves in the morning he hugs her just a little tighter than usual.  
Eventually he gets forced into going round to Rose's house, despite his protesting, and of course, Kanaya's there. She's quiet whilst Dave's there, sat in an armchair in the living room, curled up on herself and sewing some new item of clothing. But when Dave pays closer attention he realises she's mostly just stabbing at the material with the needle, sewing stitches in messy rows that she would never usually be proud of and not even really looking at what she's doing. He catches her eye at one point, and the weak, tired smile she offers him is enough for him to decide he wants to go home. Rose tries to stop him, but he's already flying away. As he drifts home, he wonders how Kanaya is, feels guilty not for asking, and spends that night staring up at the ceiling and trying not to cry. He'll talk to Kanaya properly soon, he promises himself that. Because maybe she can actually offer some new sort of insight into everything.  
Time keeps passing, and the loneliness keeps growing, but he thinks maybe he'll be able to hold on for a little while more with his friends' help.

It's been two years.  
It's been three years.  
It's been four years.

It's been five years without Karkat. Five years without his only true love. Five years without the only person that made him feel safe. Five years of loneliness that feels like it's eating him up inside. Five years of dreams of soft grey skin and red eyes, and waking up from those dreams sobbing for someone he'll never get back. Five years of wishing immortality didn't really last forever.

But he wakes up on the morning of that five year anniversary, and there's a sense of purpose somewhere in his mind, buried under the layers of depression and mental exhaustion. He showers and changes his clothes for the first time in days, styles his hair as best as he can in its slightly overgrown state and finds his nicest pair of shades. He dresses up nicely too, in one of those old suits he alchemised for date night purposes all those years back. His god tier pyjamas hang in the wardrobe amongst those suits, long ago abandoned. How can he wear those pyjamas when they now stand for everything he hates? All he sees in that red material now is the immortality that that haunts him. Sometimes he wraps himself in the cape though, remembering move nights spent huddled by Karkat's side with it draped over their shoulders, exchanging small glances during quiet parts of the movie, in the days when their relationship was still fresh and new and not quite normal to them.  
Rose arrives at his house half an hour later, Kanaya standing meekly by her side. She's rubbing at her face with a long sleeve, but Dave can see the familiar marks where green tears have stained her cheeks. They thought about inviting the others, Terezi maybe, who probably would have liked to come, or John and Jade, who deserved to be there, really. But he's not sure he can face it, not just yet. He'll invite everyone next year, if he's up to it.

So together, the small group of three (there should be four of them, there were always four of them) walk the short distance up a local hill, to a familiar old oak tree that stands all alone at the very top. Dave remembers sitting here with Karkat on quiet summer evenings, star gazing and holding hands and just appreciating each other's company. He doesn't come here much anymore. Now, instead of Karkat sat under the tree, there's a smooth, grey headstone.  
Rose and Kanaya hang back, and let Dave approach it alone at first. He crouches and stares at the words engraved into the stone, barely able to see them once the first tears start to blur his vision. He hasn't been here in... two years, maybe. He tried to make it a regular thing, Rose said it would help, but it was just too hard.  
There are flowers in his hands now, a bunch of bright red ones (he knows nothing about flowers, but Karkat used to decorate the house with ones like these), and he lays them down gently by the bottom of the gravestone.  
"Hey, Kat," he murmurs softly, kneeling onto the ground and feeling the dampness from the grass start to seep through the knees of his trousers. "I... I really miss you, baby. I wish you'd come back. I love you. Still do. Always will. You know that, right? Yeah. You must do." More tears fall onto his cheeks then, and he stands back up, watching as the sun glints on the silver lettering that spells out Karkat's name and the dates he lived for. Dave swallows down a thick wave of nausea at the sight, and turns to Rose and Kanaya, who are leaning against each other and crying too. As he nods very softly, they approach, and three gather by the gravestone together, arms wrapped tightly around each other.  
"He loved you so much Dave," Kanaya says quietly after a while.  
"I know," Dave says shakily, "That's what makes it so hard."

Ten years. Ten years of dealing with the Karkat-shaped void in his life. Ten years and Kanaya is starting to really show her age. Ten years and Rose is scared, even though she won't admit it. Ten years without Karkat, and two siblings are huddled together on a patio in the middle of a summer night, staring up at the sky and trying not to acknowledge the words they want to say.  
"Thank you, Rose," he says after a while, "For being there for me. I... I don't think I'd have got through it without you."  
"I'd do anything for you, Dave," she replies quietly, "We're family."  
There's a unspoken depth to the conversation that neither of them want to think about.  
'_I'll be there for you, when her time comes_' is what he wants to say, but knows he shouldn't.  
'_I'm scared_,' is what she's thinking, '_I'm scared of how I'll face the darkness without her'_.  
Wordlessly, he puts an arm around her, and she pulls him a little closer, and the two huddle there close together for a long time, just two scared siblings facing the thought of a future that doesn't contain the people they love the most in the world.

It's been so many countless years since Karkat died, since the light in Dave's life flickered out, replaced only by the dimmer glow of family and friendship that he tried his best to cling to. It's been so many years, that now it's not always quite so painful to get up in the morning. And then he gets a call, one afternoon, whilst he's helping Jade pick pumpkins. It's Rose, and he thinks nothing of it until he answers and all he hears is screaming. He doesn't need the words to know what's wrong, but when she finally says them, he thinks he's going to vomit. And when he looks up at Jade, there's a hand clutched across her mouth, and her ears are drooping as tears already fall down her face. It takes Dave hours to finally cry, and he only does so when he's at Rose's house, watching Jade and John carry Kanaya out, lifting her like she weighs nothing more than a feather. Watching Kanaya disappear from life is exactly the same as it was with Karkat, it feels unreal, like a dream that he's stumbling through, dazed and confused, desperate to wake up. But there's nothing; no Karkat to hold him, no Kanaya to hold Rose, just the emptiness of an endless life without them. They're still teenagers when they look in a mirror, but their lovers grew old, and frail without them. And that's the scariest thing that either of them have ever had to watch.  
Rose falls against his side eventually, mumbling wordlessly through a stream of tears. Jade's already had the good sense to hide the alcohol in the house, because that's not going to help anything. Dave knows that, tried that attempt in the first few months without Karkat, but all it did was make the nightmares worse. And Rose has had problems enough with drink. Kanaya wouldn't want her falling back into that old routine again.

They bury Kanaya on the same hill as Karkat, and now the group that reached Earth all those years back feels so much smaller with those two lost. And even with the consorts filling the streets and businesses and homes of every kingdom, Earth C feels empty. After everything, Dave's not sure if he's even capable of crying anymore. His sadness is gone, replaced by nothing but an endless, numb and empty feeling. Sometimes he wishes everything would just stop. And he knows Rose feels them same; the two talk about it together a lot when they meet up. And they do meet a lot more now. because they're the only two who are feeling the same thing completely, and they lean on each other as much as they possibly can. But sometimes it's just not enough, and nothing can stop either of them from spiralling into darkness.  
Immortality used to be the thing that Dave looked forward to: a life of not fearing death or anything. Now he spends most days trying to find some sort of light in the endlessness of his own life.

Earth C is five hundred years old. The Knight of Time carries loneliness in everything he does, bearing the weight of it on his shoulders. But that weight's a little easier to carry now, after years of getting used to it. He knows it's the same for Rose, though he has to admit he hasn't seen her in... he's not even sure how long. Time gets a little weird when you've been alive for so long.  
He cleared Karkat's stuff eventually, though he never got rid of it, just stored it away in an old garage. And he still gets some of it back out occasionally, just to remember the boyfriend that he still loves so much. He doesn't think he'll ever stop loving him. He says that to Rose one day, and she says she feels the same about Kanaya. Neither of them have any plans to find new partners. No one could ever live up to Karkat and Kanaya, not after everything they all went through together.

Grief, he has found out, is something that never leaves you. It just becomes a part of you that you learn to live with and learn from. Some days are okay, and other days the grief sneaks up on him and consumes him from the inside out. But all he can do is cling on to the memories, the good and the bad, and try to move on in whatever way possible. And though he's not here anymore, he really hopes that Karkat would be proud of him for trying to carry on.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry. If it's any consolation, I cried writing this, and I barely cry at anything.
> 
> This was half a vent fic and half just me getting upset over Davekat. I decided to combine the two feels into this.


End file.
